


When he is awake, he is alive

by Parishgirls



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-08 18:35:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8856427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parishgirls/pseuds/Parishgirls
Summary: Kavinsky went up in flames, his friends swept up the ashes. Prokopenko crashed, and his friends drove him to the hospital. But, Prokopenko's eyes open again.





	1. The Kavinsky Mansion

**Author's Note:**

> Au where Kavinsky lives, but tells no one.

Skov wakes up in Kavinsky’s basement, hungover and terrible. His tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. There had been two weeks, exactly two weeks, and it was too quiet. Maybe a bit too clean as well. With the couch in the proper place, no stains on the carpet, it doesn’t smell of vomit and vodka. He wishes it did.   
Before it happened, Skov used to find solace in an empty room, but now, he can barely sleep alone in his dorm. He pushes himself up from the couch, feels his legs shake. Too many feelings swirl around in him, but if he is scared, angry or sad, he doesn’t know. He sees his feet move towards the stairs, though he doesn’t remember moving them, and now he wonders if he ever has. 

The Kavinsky Mansion is so sterile, light hardwood floors and marble counter tops. Framed pictures and chandeliers. It feels strange calling it The Kavinsky Mansion, cause Kavinsky is no more. Maybe he was never Kavinsky, maybe he was just Joseph. But Joseph doesn’t feel good on the tongue and he wonders why, because Kavinsky was never Kavinsky, or he was, but the name has no meaning anymore, it doesn’t hold the same power it did when Joseph was alive. Now, he is just Joseph. And Skov doesn’t know Joseph. Maybe he knows Joey, but that’s debatable. When it comes down to it, he knows K, but K, K is gone. And K has been gone for more than two weeks. The last one he saw was Joseph, in all his innocence and glory, and he wishes he knew Joseph. 

Skov wonders if Kavinsky’s life was enough, if it meant something in the grand scheme of things and he can’t figure out whether his actions were selfish or selfless.   
The most devastating part is Prokopenko, so full of loyalty and love, wasting away in a hospital ward. He might miss Prokopenko more than anyone he has ever had the pleasure of losing. Deep in the pocket of his basketball shorts his phone buzzes. He digs it out slowly, hesitating to see who it is. The display reads Jiang when he finally looks at it. His thumb hoovers over the green button, sighing as he answers. 

“Yo,” 

“Are you far from the hospital?” Jiang asks, and Skov hears him light up a cigarette as he speaks. Skov considers the time it would take him from the mansion. 

“About ten minutes why, have they pulled the cord?” Skov tries to let the last part sound unaffected, but if they have, he is sure to bring a baseball bat to the hospitals parking lot. There’s silence from Jiang’s side, which isn’t unusual for him, but still Skov suspects the worst. 

“No, he,” Jiang trails off, and the way he said, he, is as if he can’t believe what he is about to say. 

“He?” Skov repeats. 

“He’s, he woke up,” 

Everything around Skov stopped, his body became too heavy for him to bear, but he didn’t manage sitting down. When Prokopenko wakes up, he’s alive, and if Prokopenko is alive, that means, he is alive.


	2. Wake up

Prokopenko can feel himself, but only sees black. 

Inside of him something is pumping, vibrating, wanting to break loose. It moves around, pushing at his ribcage desperately. If this is what it’s like to be really dead, he’d rather never been born. He can’t remember if this is what it felt like before Kavinsky brought him back. If it was, he is not feeling nostalgic. 

Sometimes, he thinks he can hear Jiang’s voice, twenty feet away, hoarse and distorted, or a soft hum from Swan or a cackle from Skov. He hasn’t heard anything close to Kavinsky’s voice. He doesn’t know if he misses it, but he thinks he needs it. 

Suddenly, while his chest threatens to burst, he hears Jiang’s voice. It’s a lot softer than what he remembered it to be, or it might just be because he is used to another version of it now. One that is a lot less Jiang and a lot more boy. He tries to make out the words, somewhat desperate for conversation. First he only hears mumbles, a small sigh or scoff here and there, but then it clears, like his ears pop. 

“This wasn’t supposed to happen, you know that right? If I knew this was gonna happen, I would have slit your tiers before you got in the car,” 

Then his chest bursts, the thing living inside him, pushes through his ribcage, and it feels like everything rips out of him, but not in a painful way. It’s not freeing either, it just is. What greets him is white, and at first, he thinks he has just passed on further. That he will never hear Jiang’s voice again, won’t ever hear a hum from Swan or a cackle from Skov. But then he sees the ceiling, a picture with a blue frame, his two good hands. And Jiang, beautiful, thin faced, and real. He sits there, staring at his hands, a lost boy.  
Prokopenko lifts his hand to see if he actually can. It’s heavier than he remembered it to be. He wiggles his fingers, his toes, bends his knee, tilts his head. 

“Proko?” Jiangs voice shakes. His lips parted, revealing his teeth. 

“Jiang,” Proko answers, he sounds more surprised than Jiang. 

Everything in Jiang bubbles up too quickly and he thinks he is going to puke. His tongue too big for his mouth, his limbs too heavy to carry, his gaze never leaving Prokopenko. He actually forgets to blink. 

“You were gone,”  
\--  
Skov saunters into the room thirty minutes later. Basketball shorts and everything that follows Skov. Prokopenko never thought he would miss the scent of Skov’s body spray mixed with vodka. He hesitates when he sees Prokopenko. Skov had his doubts, he saw Prokopenko slam into another car. 

“Proko,” he says. 

“Hey,” Prokopenko smiles with that small gap between his two front teeth and his still split lip. 

“Did you call Swan?” Jiang asks from his place on the end of Prokopenko’s bed. 

“I texted him,” 

“What about K?” Prokopenko asks. 

Jiang and Skov exchange a look. Unsure of how to explain the situation, cause Kavinsky isn’t dead, but he might as well be. It’s not like he’s just going to show up. Or he might, it’s K. But they can’t go around having high hopes. Prokopenko’s face falls as a thought passes through his mind. He doesn’t want to believe it, but when the others don’t answer, he asks. 

“Has he dreamed up a new one already?” He’d rather stay in the black than come back to see himself replaced. “Thought it take longer to perfect,” he adds with a smile and a small chuckle. 

“No, K’s just gone,” Jiang responds. 

“How gone?” 

“We thought he died, but you’re still here,” This time it’s Skov, who pulls a chair up the side of the bed. Prokopenko looks at him, wide and dreamy eyed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, leave some words in the comments if you'd like. You can also check out my tumblr jasamalie, if you want!


	3. Still Kavinsky, but also Joseph

Going back to Kavinsky’s house: A play. 

Prokopenko has looked in the mirror exactly one time after he woke up. A reflection means he is alive, and he doesn’t know if he wants to be. But instead of focusing on the confusing fact that he is still here, he listens to Skov’s plan to find K, agrees with Swan that he will be too hard to find. Let’s himself be talked into going back. Prokopenko opens the front door, unlocked as usual. Who would be crazy enough to break into this house. 

He jogs up the stairs, moving is still new to him. His legs don’t feel quite like they did before. He stops, takes a few steps closer to Kavinsky’s bedroom door. He knows that Kavinsky isn’t dead, but it feels like he is. He grips the doorknob, clutches it in his fists and opens the door. It’s very empty now. It looks like it did before, but still it’s empty. It still smells of Kavinsky in there, and everything that entailed. He doesn’t know what to do here. Jiang suggested it might refresh his mind on where to find Kavinsky, but Prokopenko doubts it. 

There’s a small pile of green pills on the desk. Clothes scattered on the ground, the bed sheets crumpled up. He wonders if it still smells of him. It probably does, but he doesn’t want to know. He wishes he had refused to come here. Still he sits down in the floor. He remembers many nights he had spent on it, drunk or high on something passed down from Kavinsky. Simply not making it to the bed before his legs gave out, him collapsing on the floor, to wake up to a glass of water and aspirin besides him the next day.  
He stretches for the bottom drawer of the desk. Notebooks and several information notes on unfinished school projects. Prokopenko empties everything on the floor. He thinks he hears Kavinsky’s voice, kind of like when he though he heard Jiang. 

“Baby boy, why would you do that?” 

His breath stops in his throat. His eyes dart around the room, but there is no one there. He wishes there was. He spreads the papers over the floor. He doesn’t know what he is looking for. Maybe some kind of clue. But he is almost sure that if Kavinsky didn’t want them to find them, they wouldn’t. Between the white papers, he sees something almost glisten. He reaches his hand and pulls a photograph out from beneath the pile. It’s of him and K. They’re both young, quick, sober. He doesn’t know when the last time any of them were really sober. They look healthy, happy. Kavinsky has his arm draped over his shoulders, a deep purple bruise on his cheekbone. And Prokopenko realizes that this is Joseph. Still Kavinsky, but also Joseph. 

He takes the photograph and tucks it in his back pocket before getting up. And heading back out. 

“Don’t leave,” 

He stops, looks back into the room. 

“I miss you, Proko, please,” 

He furrows his brows looking helpless. Prokopenko wants to hear a nasal laugh, a spiteful, fuck off, a sweet, baby boy, but not this. He doesn’t want to hear Kavinsky so small. Small and Kavinsky doesn’t fit together. But Kavinsky isn’t even there. He is imagining things, stupid things that only mess with his mind. Things that aren’t even nostalgic. 

When he turns to leave again, the voice doesn’t try to stop him. 

Prokopenko knows where he is, or at least he thinks he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it, you can also check out my tumblr under the name jasamalie if you'd like!


	4. Finally came to see me, huh?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You committed public suicide, I didn’t think I’d see you again,” He says, but doesn’t look at Kavinsky.

Prokopenko doesn’t tell anyone where he is going, doesn’t tell anyone that he is going, he just gets in his car and drives. He sees the Mitsubishi graveyard come into view. And his mouth fills with a sweet taste, and it tickles his throat as he swallows his own spit. He parks his car by the side of the road, and walks the rest of the way. The wind is gracious that day, which it hasn’t been in Henrietta for quite some time. His shoes subs against the gravel, as he doesn’t care to lift his feet properly. 

The graveyard is a strange sight in daylight, he doesn’t quite enjoy it. Nor has he ever, in the night it’s easier to ignore, maybe because of the fact that he never came there sober. He looks over the myriad of failed and crashed Mitsu’s. He misses racing, though doesn’t know when he will be comfortable slamming the gas again. He looks in through some of the windows, most of the insides are empty, dust covered, or missing seats. 

He moves through the rows of cars, wondering if he is really going to check the whole place, and as he walks, he finds it more and more discouraging to continue, he is almost certain that he won’t find Kavinsky here, and he doesn’t know if he wants to find Kavinsky anywhere. Prokopenko, out of all people, started to wonder if life without Kavinsky wasn’t all-bad. 

Something moves inside a Mitsubishi, Prokopenko squints his eyes and sees a foot pressed up against one of the back windows. He moves closer to the hood, the front window is missing and he hears the fabric of the seats creak. His breath doesn’t reach his lungs, stops somewhere in between his throat and chest. He knows Kavinsky is alive, so it doesn’t surprise him when he sees Kavinsky sit up in the backseat, white powder under his nose, blood shot eyes and a pair of shades on the top of his head. He grins wide showing off his teeth, he has a cut on the bridge of his nose. It looks like K. 

“Baby boy,” He says sweetly and it rolls of his tongue so naturally. “Finally came to see me, huh?” 

He pulls a cigarette out of the small breast pocket of his white t-shirt. He lights it up and blinks at Prokopenko as he takes a drag. The lines in his forehead prominent. Prokopenko makes his way around the Mitsu and opens the door on the other side of Kavinsky. He leaves the door open as he sits down. 

“You committed public suicide, I didn’t think I’d see you again,” He says, but doesn’t look at Kavinsky. 

“Yet here I am, funny thing that is,” Kavinsky replies leaning back into the seat, head lolling to Prokopenko’s side, and he feels Kavinsky’s black pools bore into his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow, it's been forever since I updated, sorry about that folks! 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter, I can't tell you when the next chapter will be up, but I'll try getting it up sooner than this one!
> 
> Thank your for your time, and if you want you can check out my tumblr under the name jasamalie!


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